Dreamscape

I sit in my dimly lit room, cocooned by my chair, the light of forty lurid visions of distorted life washing over my face. I am alone, the unsettling apparitions on my screen my only company, as I dispel the gentle claws of sleep with an occasional sip of coffee. The images on the screens slowly swirl in and out of focus, the movements of the almost-people just slightly jerky; like stop-motion set up by a careless cameraman.

  Not that these visions were filmed by any man. 

  I am watching dreams. 

  The new wave of AI sleep-monitoring apps have brought in a secret new era of security work, and I was thrust in on the ground floor. Millions of people put these electrodes on to sleep every night; just a couple of tiny pads on the side of your head to monitor your sleep activity, and then the app gives you detailed sleep health information, and an AI-written dream journal, mapped out from your brainwaves. There were privacy concerns at first - there always are with new technology - but this didn’t last long; soon half of the UK were unwittingly signing their own dreams over to the government and several ad agencies, thanks to an enormous and confusingly-worded set of terms and conditions. And none of them suspected that written journals are not the only thing the AI is capable of.

  That’s where I come in - pinched a month ago from a security firm, with the offer of a doubled salary and fewer hours in exchange for my complete secrecy. There must be dozens of us loners across the country; picked for our attention to detail and our lack of friends and family, and hired to watch the contents of people’s minds in garish technicolour for seven hours a night. Our job is to look for signs of serious criminal activity, and report the users immediately to our supervisors for ‘further monitering’, whatever that may mean. I try to tell myself that it’s for the public good; a matter of important national security, they told me; but I can’t escape the niggling feeling that I chose money over morals. That these people whose very thoughts are being laid bare in front of me have a right to know what’s really going on. I try to be lenient with my reporting; after all, these are not real crimes, and there’s always that voice in the back of my head telling me that maybe they just read too much horror fiction, or watched a violent film before bed, or, more likely, spent their evening gaming. These are real, nuanced people having these dreams, and I hope I’m not getting them immediately put on a government watchlist for just thinking about crime. Asking questions not directly related to my job during my briefing was like asking a brick wall for directions, so anyone’s guess is as good as mine as to what happens to these poor souls after I send off their user numbers.  

  But the promise of a comfortable salary keeps me going so far. A stabbing here, an occasional shooting there, maybe some shaky POV footage of class A drug-taking; all reported to my superiors on the smaller monitor next to my live feed screen. There’s a strange disconnect from reality in my brain on this job - the over-bright colours, the slightly distorted uncanny-valley-esque faces with their wide unblinking eyes, and the not-quite-hyperrealism of the imagery tend to make my imagination run riot; several times each shift I catch myself nervously checking over my shoulder in case anything has somehow escaped this screen to creep up on me. I’ve seen more violence in real life than I have on this monitor, but the constant unease here tops any other security job I’ve had. I have a feeling I’ll be replaced by another AI before I get desensitised to this screen of horrors, and I almost look forward to that day; maybe they’ll relocate me to some mundane security desk work in a low-level government building before I lose my sanity.

Tonight, there is very little to report on, as usual. I scan over walks or flybys through ever-shifting cities and parks; a view of a small boy playing in the street with a large cat of indeterminate colour, the hues clearly hazy in the dreamer’s memory; a feverish nightmare of grasping red hands extending from the very ground and clutching a dreamer’s leg; an uncomfortably intimate bedroom scene; the warm hues of sunset shimmering across the yellow sand of an empty beach. This month I have seen every possible aspect of life and fantasy through the AI’s slightly warped imagery; almost beautiful at times, but with the usual distortion of dreaming further added to by the technological imperfections of recreating the dreams for the screen. I bet most people can't picture the faces of their friends or family right down to the last minute detail, like how many visible teeth they have, or exactly where their ears line up with their eyes - it’s no different when we dream. Add a still-developing AI and its attempt at lifelike colours, and you end up with something very unnerving indeed. 

  But one dream tonight seems particularly unnerving. And in a different way to the leg-grabbing demon dream, which seems to have woken the dreamer, as that grid square has gone black. 

Near the middle of the bottom row, a rapidly morphing set of faces and locations blur into each other almost too fast for my eye to keep up. Constant irregular blackouts permeate this warp-speed onslaught of imagery, giving it a strobe light quality different from anything I've seen before. A square will generally black out when a user wakes up, and after a few minutes of inactivity a new user will be added to the grid, but this is like someone struggling to wake up and unable to escape the dream. 

  I tell myself that it's just a software glitch - there have been times in the past where a particularly light sleeper has made the dreams on the screen flicker once or twice - but a sense of rising fear at what I might be seeing starts to fill me. I don't want to tear my eyes from it, but I hastily send an email to my supervisor describing what's happening, my gaze all the while flicking back to this ever-quickening cascade of imagery. Hundreds of faces seem to flash by every second now, permeated with skies in every season, views over grey towns, summer hazes over the sea, houses, churches, restaurants… 

  As the faces begin to noticeably age, the transitions between moments begin slowing, and the grim certainty sets in that I am indeed watching someone's final thoughts flash past their eyes. It's something you hear about in books and films, and it's easy enough to imagine, but not like this - this light show of AI-distorted nightmare fuel is making me feel nauseous. 

  And there is nothing I can do. I have no access to these people's names or locations; my supervisors have little more than me, and the higher-ups in control of all the data will all be asleep in their no doubt comfortable beds. My supervisor will likely have seen my email by now, and I cannot leave my desk during working hours; I have done all I can, and am as helpless as a cyclist watching a nearby car veer over a cliff. 

  Slowly, mercifully, the deluge of memories slows to a trickle, and as the pulse of the strobing slows, the screen lingers on one face. It's a beautiful face, even through the filter of a machine; her greying hair and slightly weathered skin hint at middle-age, but the sparkling eyes and the faintly mischievous smile are youthful still. The image is starkly realistic, the face rendered in almost perfect detail, the screen's over-bright colours somehow only adding to its radiance. 

  Faintly I hear the noise of the door opening and shutting behind me, and the scuffing of expensive leather shoes as Richard, my supervisor for that night, enters my office, likely out of morbid curiosity more than anything else. The user base for Dreamscape is generally young and healthy, and with many of those users no doubt going unmonitored every night I am unsure of whether this has happened before on a shift. We 'security guards' have staggered shifts so I've not met the others, but I can't imagine that this modified office block holds enough security guards to monitor half the UK. 

  I don't look round at Richard, as I can't unglue my eyes to the screen, but I wordlessly point at the grid square I emailed him about. I can imagine his deep set, weasel-like eyes narrowing in fascination behind me. He has entered early enough to catch the final view of that lovely smile as the image strobes for the final few times, fading to blackness. I hear the carpeted floor creak softly under his foot as he starts to leave, but something else is now filling that portion of the screen. At once the light is almost overpowering, the other grid squares now looking like grimy seaglass next to a stained-glass window by comparison. Bright, sparkling white light awash with glints of every possible colour assaults my eyes, and the floor behind me creaks once again as my supervisor steps back in mute shock. 

  As my eyes adjust, I begin to see delicate, slowly waving shapes begin to fill the periphery of the little square of light. They look almost like leaves, but for their dazzling colours that seem to dance across their surface. Rich purples, fiery reds, and hints of gold brighter than any jewellery I've seen seem to shimmer across them. 

  My eyes begin to pick up more, and I feel my jaw go slack at the sight of the beauty on the screen, as Richard reaches over my shoulder and taps a few buttons on my keyboard with the urgency of a man in desperate need. The tiny square now fills the entire screen, the burning brightness feeling as if it is searing my retinas to ash as I blink through the pain. And yet I cannot look away. Something compels me to stare, the discomfort sending tears streaming down my face. Richard now taps pitifully at the screen brightness key but it does nothing. The pixels seem to have taken on a light of their own, dozens of times brighter than any computer monitor on earth, and as if by some unknown will, we are forced to watch. With pitiful slowness my watering eyes begin to finish their torturous adjustment, and I can see even more. 

  The landscape below seems to stretch for hundreds of miles, the visibility perfect and the entire sky ablaze with colour, without a ripple of cloud in sight. Clearings of peacefully swaying flowers emerge below the canopy of what must be millions of shining, dazzlingly beautiful trees, each bough seemingly dripping with colour from the magnificent leaves that adorn it. I cannot describe the colour of the flowers because I'm not sure that they exist in any human language; I feel like I can see every possible shade of the colour spectrum, freed from the limitations of my human eyes. And everything is rendered in perfect, photorealistic detail - there is no stop-motion jerkiness, everything remains fixed in place, and there is somehow nothing gaudy about this sea of wildly vivid colour; even as I wipe away the tears from my cheeks I feel an all-consuming sense of peace.

  But I don't have much time to absorb the spectacle, as something else seemed to be rapidly materialising from the very air in the foreground of this stunning view. As the ripples in the air begin to cease, I see it is a figure, upright but not quite human-like, or indeed like anything on Earth, but somehow deeply familiar to some hidden recess of my mind. Its form is fluid, seemingly weightless and as if it is simply crafted out of light; its smooth, shapeless body shines like the landscape, but with a steady, silver glow. It does not stand on the ground, but rather floats slightly above, its almost birdlike bare feet just grazing the brilliant flowers below it. I cannot tell how many upper limbs it has; there are no visible wings but appendages almost like tentacles, or tendrils of smoke, seem to fade in and out of reality. As my eyes scan up the screen to its head, considerably above the user's eye level, I notice now that its eyes are closed, and as they slowly open I become aware that they seem to be its only facial feature. Its small, weightless head is dominated by the two obsidian orbs that seem to look right into my very soul. But they are not for me, a distant part of my brain tries to say. None of this is for me. Or Richard. This is for User 0378151, whoever they may be. But neither I nor Richard move. We are transfixed, glued to our positions in awe, incredulity and now perhaps a slight tinge of fear, as the mouthless head of the figure moves closer, the faintly glistening black orbs somehow reflecting almost none of the landscape's vibrant colours. 

  A hum permeates the silence of the room, the large computer connected to the screen beginning to struggle against the pressure; and the picture flickers, the landscape still burned onto my eyes as the picture cuts out for a moment.

  And then the creature's face fills the screen, the computer screaming for mercy in the corner as its fan reaches maximum speed. The screen almost goes dark again, and then suddenly brighter, brighter than it was before, brighter than the sun, and I struggle to restrain my voice from joining the anguished squeal of the computer fan. The eyes on the screen are two chasms in a sea of lava, the two black circles searing themselves into my mind forever. 

  Then suddenly, complete darkness. Or, nearly complete. On the screen, the only piece of perfectly rendered text I have ever seen from the AI dream projections:

"There are some things that mortal eyes are not meant to see."

  And the monitor shatters, as if forced apart from the inside, shards of plastic slamming into the walls and leaving us jumping to the floor for cover. The wailing of the computer is silent, and I can smell burning, my unseeing eyes forcing my brain to conjure up images of grey smoke pouring from the computer's vents. 

  Neither of us move for a few minutes, the effects of what we have just seen running deep, until acrid fumes hit the back of my throat, forcing a dry cough. 

I stagger to my feet like a toddler, my shaking hands clutching for the wall as I narrowly avoid stepping on Richard's prone form. The dim glow of the yellow ceiling light is not enough for my eyes to register, and it is only after I grab the door handle in a desperate lunge, wrenching it open, that my tired eyes begin to see the real world again. I gulp in clean air, hearing my supervisor clambering to his feet behind me, as the slate greys and off-whites of the office building pull me slowly but violently back to reality. And as the wail of the fire alarm finally sounds, I notice that it is not just my computer that has failed. Several thin whisps of smoke emerge around me as other doors are flung open, tired and scared employees hurrying to the exits. I don't doubt that this is the end of Dreamscape, and I wonder if that message appeared on everyone's screen. I had seen things that shouldn't be possible by earthly laws, and nothing would surprise me at this point. 

Richard scrambles past me, his shoes sliding on the thin carpet, and behind him I slowly, carefully make my way out of that dreadful place. 

  I may not know exactly what I saw in this lifetime; I have never been a religious man and I don't know if there's any religious leader on earth that knows how it feels to look into those all-seeing eyes. Maybe no living person on Earth knows that sensation. I could tell myself that the vision was just the scrambled last thoughts of a dying brain coupled with a software failure, but that would require some serious cognitive dissonance on my part. Perhaps my brain will try to rationalise it in the future, but that thought seems impossible right now. Everything seemed so real, so tangible, making this mundane world I've returned to seem like a dull, grey simulation. In this moment, I do not know how I will ever return to normal life. 

   But what I do know for sure is that I must strive to make some changes. When I die, if I am so lucky as to enter that paradise again, I want to see no trace of disappointment in those flinty eyes.